The Yankees can’t be stopped, and neither can Giancarlo Stanton.
The dynamic slugger picked up another two hits on Friday night, including a mammoth 472-foot home run to break a scoreless tie and send the Bombers on their way to their 13th straight win. It’s the fourth game in a row that Stanton has gone deep, and he is among the hottest hitters in baseball with a 1.065 OPS over the last month.
“Just making sure I’m seeing the ball well,” Stanton said. “Being quick, not powerful. That’s the best way I can attest to it. Just make sure my barrel gets there and don’t try to swing with my body, just be quick and get the barrel in the zone.”
Stanton looked both quick and powerful when he smashed a Sean Manaea fastball to left center for the ninth home run in the Statcast era over 470 feet. No other player has more than four.
The titanic blast led to some comical reactions from his teammates in the dugout, who seemingly will never get used to the moonshots that have routinely been coming off Stanton’s bat over the past month.
“If you look back at the video, which I will later here when I do my studying, you see some funny little tidbits there,” Stanton said. “So yeah, that will be my right-before-bed homer.”
Baseball fans are fortunate enough to see a player like Stanton in the modern era where majestic home runs are quantifiable, both in terms of distance and velocity, which make his current hot streak seem all the more superhuman.
“It’s pretty cool,” Stanton said. “Luckily we have all these extra stats and cool things to kind of pile up. When it’s all said and done, I think it will be a cool thing to look at. For me, I put the team up by a run and helped us stay on top and get the win, so I don’t care if it’s right over the fence or a thousand feet over. It doesn’t matter.”
His home run Friday night felt like it went a thousand feet over the fence, and it was his latest long ball to either tie the game or give the Yankees the lead, and it increased his on-base streak to 23 games. The Yankees are the hottest team in baseball, and they might be the owner of the hottest hitter in baseball as well.
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
Follow WFAN on Social Media
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitch
